Reuters

Reuters (/ˈrɔɪtərz/ (listen)) is an international news organization owned by Thomson Reuters.[1] It employs some 2,500 journalists and 600 photojournalists in about 200 locations worldwide.[2][3] Reuters is one of the largest news agencies in the world.[4]

This article is about the Reuters news agency. For the current parent company, see Thomson Reuters. For the former parent company prior to its 2008 acquisition by The Thomson Corporation, see Reuters Group.

Reuters
TypeDivision
IndustryNews agency
FoundedOctober 1851 (1851-10)
FounderPaul Julius Reuter
HeadquartersCanary Wharf, London, England, United Kingdom
Area served
Worldwide
Key people
Michael Friedenberg (President)
Stephen J. Adler
(Editor-in-Chief)
ParentThomson Reuters
Websitereuters.com
Paul Reuter, the founder of Reuters (photographed by Nadar, c. 1865)

The agency was established in London in 1851 by the German-born Paul Reuter. It was acquired by the Thomson Corporation in 2008 and now makes up the media division of Thomson Reuters.

History

19th century

Paul Reuter worked at a book-publishing firm in Berlin and was involved in distributing radical pamphlets at the beginning of the Revolutions in 1848. These publications brought much attention to Reuter, who in 1850 developed a prototype news service in Aachen using homing pigeons and electric telegraphy from 1851 on, in order to transmit messages between Brussels and Aachen,[5] in what today is Aachen's Reuters House.

Reuter moved to London in 1851 and established a news wire agency at the London Royal Exchange. Headquartered in London, Reuter's company initially covered commercial news, serving banks, brokerage houses, and business firms.[5] The first newspaper client to subscribe was the London Morning Advertiser in 1858, and more began to subscribe soon after.[5][6] According to the Encyclopædia Britannica: "the value of Reuters to newspapers lay not only in the financial news it provided but in its ability to be the first to report on stories of international importance."[5] It was the first to report Abraham Lincoln's assassination in Europe, for instance, in 1865.[5][7]

In 1865, Reuter incorporated his private business, under the name Reuter's Telegram Company Limited; Reuter was appointed managing director of the company.[8]

In 1872, Reuter's expanded into the Far East, followed by South America in 1874. Both expansions were made possible by advances in overland telegraphs and undersea cables.[7] In 1878, Reuter retired as managing director, and was succeeded by his eldest son, Herbert de Reuter.[8] In 1883, Reuter's began transmitting messages electrically to London newspapers.[7]

20th century
Roderick Jones, general manager 1915–1941

Reuter's son Herbert de Reuter continued as general manager until his death by suicide in 1915. The company returned to private ownership in 1916, when all shares were purchased by Roderick Jones and Mark Napier; they renamed the company "Reuters Limited", dropping the apostrophe.[8] In 1923, Reuters began using radio to transmit news internationally, a pioneering act.[7] In 1925, the Press Association (PA) of Great Britain acquired a majority interest in Reuters, and full ownership some years later.[5] During the world wars, The Guardian reported that Reuters: "came under pressure from the British government to serve national interests. In 1941 Reuters deflected the pressure by restructuring itself as a private company." In 1945 Reuters was the first broadcasting company to broadcast news of Heinrich Himmler's attempts to negotiate with the western allies through Count Bernadotte, a Swedish nobleman. The new owners formed the Reuters Trust.[7] In 1941, the PA sold half of Reuters to the Newspaper Proprietors' Association, and co-ownership was expanded in 1947 to associations that represented daily newspapers in New Zealand and Australia.[5] The Reuters Trust Principles were put in place to maintain the company's independence.[9] At that point, Reuters had become "one of the world's major news agencies, supplying both text and images to newspapers, other news agencies, and radio and television broadcasters."[5] Also at that point, it directly or through national news agencies provided service "to most countries, reaching virtually all the world's leading newspapers and many thousands of smaller ones," according to Britannica.[5]

In 1961, Reuters scooped news of the erection of the Berlin Wall.[10] Reuters was one of the first news agencies to transmit financial data over oceans via computers in the 1960s.[5] In 1973, Reuters "began making computer-terminal displays of foreign-exchange rates available to clients."[5] In 1981, Reuters began supporting electronic transactions on its computer network and afterwards developed a number of electronic brokerage and trading services.[5] Reuters was floated as a public company in 1984,[10] when Reuters Trust was listed on the stock exchanges[7] such as the London Stock Exchange (LSE) and NASDAQ.[5] Reuters later published the first story of the Berlin Wall being breached in 1989.[10]

21st century

Reuters' share price grew during the dotcom boom, then fell after the banking troubles in 2001.[7] In 2002, Britannica wrote that most news throughout the world came from three major agencies: the Associated Press, Reuters, and Agence France-Presse.[4]

Until 2008, the Reuters news agency formed part of an independent company, Reuters Group plc. Reuters merged with Thomson Corporation in Canada in 2008, forming Thomson Reuters.[5] In 2009, Thomson Reuters withdrew from the LSE and the NASDAQ, instead listing its shares on the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX) and the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE).[5] The last surviving member of the Reuters family founders, Marguerite, Baroness de Reuter, died at age 96 on 25 January 2009.[11] The parent company Thomson Reuters is headquartered in Toronto, and provides financial information to clients while also maintaining its traditional news-agency business.[5]

In 2012, Thomson Reuters appointed Jim Smith as CEO.[9] In July 2016, Thomson Reuters agreed to sell its intellectual property and science operation for $3.55 billion to private equity firms.[12] In October 2016, Thomson Reuters announced expansions and relocations to Toronto.[12] As part of cuts and restructuring, in November 2016, Thomson Reuters Corp. eliminated 2,000 worldwide jobs out of its around 50,000 employees.[12]

Journalists

Reuters employs some 2,500 journalists and 600 photojournalists[13] in about 200 locations worldwide.[2][3] Reuters journalists use the Reuters Handbook of Journalism as a guide for fair presentation and disclosure of relevant interests, to "maintain the values of integrity and freedom upon which their reputation for reliability, accuracy, speed and exclusivity relies".[14]

In May 2000, Kurt Schork, an American reporter, was killed in an ambush while on assignment in Sierra Leone. In April and August 2003, news cameramen Taras Protsyuk and Mazen Dana were killed in separate incidents by U.S. troops in Iraq. In July 2007, Namir Noor-Eldeen and Saeed Chmagh were killed when they were struck by fire from a U.S. military Apache helicopter in Baghdad.[15][16] During 2004, cameramen Adlan Khasanov in Chechnya and Dhia Najim in Iraq were also killed. In April 2008, cameraman Fadel Shana was killed in the Gaza Strip after being hit by an Israeli tank.[17]

While covering China's Cultural Revolution in Peking in the late 1960s for Reuters, journalist Anthony Grey was detained by the Chinese government in response to the jailing of several Chinese journalists by the colonial British government of Hong Kong.[18] He was released after being imprisoned for 27 months from 1967 to 1969 and was awarded an OBE by the British Government. After his release, he went on to become a best-selling historical novelist.

In May 2016, the Ukrainian website Myrotvorets published the names and personal data of 4,508 journalists, including Reuters reporters, and other media staff from all over the world, who were accredited by the self-proclaimed authorities in the separatist-controlled regions of eastern Ukraine.[19]

In 2018, two Reuters journalists were convicted in Myanmar of obtaining state secrets while investigating a massacre in a Rohingya village.[20] The arrest and convictions were widely condemned as an attack on press freedom. The journalists, Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo, received several awards, including the Foreign Press Association Media Award and the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting, and were named as part of the Time Person of the Year for 2018 along with other persecuted journalists.[21][22][23] After 511 days in prison, Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo were freed on 7 March 2019 after receiving a presidential pardon.[24]

Killed on assignment
Name Nationality Location Date
Hos MainaKenyanSomalia12 July 1993
Dan EldonKenyanSomalia12 July 1993
Kurt SchorkAmericanSierra Leone24 May 2000
Taras ProtsyukUkrainianIraq8 April 2003
Mazen DanaPalestinianIraq17 August 2003
Adlan KhasanovRussianChechnya9 May 2004
Waleed KhaledIraqiIraq28 August 2005
Namir Noor-EldeenIraqiIraq12 July 2007[25]
Saeed ChmaghIraqiIraq12 July 2007[25]
Fadel Shana'aPalestinianGaza Strip16 April 2008
Hiro MuramotoJapaneseThailand10 April 2010
Molhem BarakatSyrianSyria20 December 2013

Controversies

Accusation of collaboration with the CIA

In October 1977, Rolling Stone published an article by journalist Carl Bernstein, in which the author wrote that, according to information from CIA officials, Reuters cooperated with the Agency.[26][27] In response to that, Reuters' then managing director, Gerald Long, had asked for evidence of the charges, but none was provided.[28]

Policy of objective language
Reuters building entrance in New York City

Reuters has a policy of taking a "value-neutral approach" which extends to not using the word terrorist in its stories. The practice attracted criticism following the September 11 attacks.[29] Reuters' editorial policy states: "Reuters may refer without attribution to terrorism and counterterrorism in general, but do not refer to specific events as terrorism. Nor does Reuters use the word terrorist without attribution to qualify specific individuals, groups or events."[30] By contrast, the Associated Press does use the term terrorist in reference to non-governmental organizations who carry out attacks on civilian populations.[29] In 2004, Reuters asked a Canadian newspaper chain to remove Reuters' bylines, as the Canadian newspaper had edited Reuters articles to insert the word terrorist.[31]

Climate change reporting

In July 2013, David Fogarty, former Reuters climate change correspondent in Asia, resigned after a career of almost 20 years with the company and wrote that "progressively, getting any climate change-themed story published got harder" following comments from then deputy editor-in-chief Paul Ingrassia that he was a climate change sceptic. In his comments, Fogarty stated:[32][33][34]

By mid-October, I was informed that climate change just wasn't a big story for the present, but that it would be if there was a significant shift in global policy, such as the US introducing an emissions cap-and-trade system. Very soon after that conversation I was told my climate change role was abolished.

Ingrassia, formerly Reuters' managing editor, previously worked for The Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones for 31 years.[35][36] Reuters responded to Fogarty's piece by stating: "Reuters has a number of staff dedicated to covering this story, including a team of specialist reporters at Point Carbon and a columnist. There has been no change in our editorial policy."[37]

Subsequently, climate blogger Joe Romm cited a Reuters article on climate as employing "false balance", and quoted Dr. Stefan Rahmstorf, Co-Chair of Earth System Analysis at the Potsdam Institute that "[s]imply, a lot of unrelated climate skeptics nonsense has been added to this Reuters piece. In the words of the late Steve Schneider, this is like adding some nonsense from the Flat Earth Society to a report about the latest generation of telecommunication satellites. It is absurd." Romm opined: "We can't know for certain who insisted on cramming this absurd and non-germane 'climate sceptics nonsense' into the piece, but we have a strong clue. If it had been part of the reporter's original reporting, you would have expected direct quotes from actual skeptics, because that is journalism 101. The fact that the blather was all inserted without attribution suggests it was added at the insistence of an editor."[38]

Photograph controversies

According to Ynetnews, Reuters was accused of bias against Israel in its coverage of the 2006 Israel–Lebanon conflict after the wire service used two doctored photos by a Lebanese freelance photographer, Adnan Hajj.[39] In August 2006, Reuters announced it had severed all ties with Hajj and said his photographs would be removed from its database.[40]

In 2010, Reuters was criticised again by Haaretz for "anti-Israeli" bias when it cropped the edges of photos, removing commandos' knives held by activists and a naval commando's blood from photographs taken aboard the Mavi Marmara during the Gaza flotilla raid, a raid that left nine Turkish activists dead. It has been alleged that in two separate photographs, knives held by the activists were cropped out of the versions of the pictures published by Reuters.[41] Reuters said it is standard operating procedure to crop photos at the margins, and replaced the cropped images with the original ones after it was brought to the agency's attention.[41]

Accusations of pro-Fernando Henrique Cardoso bias

In March 2015, the Brazilian affiliate of Reuters released a text containing an interview with Brazilian ex-president Fernando Henrique Cardoso about the ongoing Petrobras scandal. Petrobras is a state owned oil company in Brazil. In 2014, it was discovered that many politicians of Brazil were involved in corruption due to giving contracts of the company to different corporations for exchange of money. After this scandal, a text was released which contains Brazil's former president Fernando Henrique's interview. One of the paragraphs mentioned a comment by a former Petrobras manager, in which he suggests corruption in that company may date back to Cardoso's presidency. Attached to it, there was a comment between parenthesis: "Podemos tirar se achar melhor" ("we can take it out if [you] think better"),[42] which is now absent from the current version of the text.[43] It suggests that former president was involved in corruption and he wants them to cut out that text. The agency later issued a text in which they confirm the mistake, explaining it was a question by one of the Brazilian editors to the journalist who wrote the original text in English, and that it was not supposed to be published.[44]

Funding by the UK Government

In November 2019 the UK Foreign Office released archive documents confirming that it had provided funding to Reuters during the 1960s and 1970s so that Reuters could expand its coverage in the Middle East. An agreement was made between the Information Research Department (IRD) and Reuters for the UK Treasury to provide £350,000 over 4 years to fund Reuters' expansion. The UK government had already been funding the Latin American department of Reuters through a shell company; however, this method was discounted for the Middle East operation due to the accounting of the shell company looking suspicious, with the IRD stating that the company "already looks queer to anyone who might wish to investigate why such an inactive and unprofitable company continues to run."[45] Instead, the BBC was used to fund the project by paying for enhanced subscriptions to the news organisation which the treasury would reimburse the BBC for at a later date. The IRD acknowledged that this agreement would not give them editorial control over Reuters, although the IRD believed it would give them political influence over Reuters' work, stating "this influence would flow, at the top level, from Reuters' willingness to consult and to listen to views expressed on the results of its work.”[45][46]

See also

References

Citations
  1. "About us". Reuters. Retrieved 14 January 2019.
  2. "Home - Reuters News - The Real World in Real Time". Reuters News Agency. Retrieved 13 December 2020.
  3. "Careers". www.reuters.tv. Retrieved 14 January 2019.
  4. "News agency". Encyclopædia Britannica. 23 August 2002. Retrieved 18 February 2017.
  5. "Reuters (news agency)". Encyclopædia Britannica. 26 March 2010. Retrieved 3 November 2012.
  6. Stevens, Mark A. (2001). Merriam Webster's Collegiate Encyclopedia. Merriam-Webster. pp. 1, 366. ISBN 978-0877790174.
  7. Allen, Katie (4 May 2017). "Reuters: a brief history". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 11 October 2017. Retrieved 19 February 2017.
  8. "History of Reuters Group PLC". Funding Universe. Retrieved 8 May 2019.
  9. "Company History". Thomson Reuters. 13 December 2013. Archived from the original on 3 May 2014. Retrieved 7 May 2014.
  10. Read, Donald (1999). The Power of News: The History of Reuters. Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198207689.001.0001. ISBN 978-0198207689.
  11. "Baroness de Reuter, last link to news dynasty, dies". ABC News. Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Reuters. 26 January 2009. Archived from the original on 27 June 2018. Retrieved 21 February 2009.
  12. Smith, Gerry (1 November 2016). "Thomson Reuters Cuts 2,000 Jobs Worldwide in Restructuring". Bloomberg News. Retrieved 6 February 2018.
  13. "Pictures". Reuters News Agency. Retrieved 17 December 2020.
  14. "Main Page - Handbook of Journalism". Handbook.reuters.com. 23 September 2014. Retrieved 17 June 2015.
  15. Bumiller, Elisabeth (5 April 2010). "Video Shows U.S. Killing of Reuters Employees". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 9 September 2012. Retrieved 24 August 2015.
  16. "Collateral Murder - Wikileaks - Iraq". YouTube. 3 April 2010. Retrieved 17 June 2015.
  17. Al-Mughrabi, Nidal (16 April 2008). "Reuters cameraman killed in Gaza". Reuters. Archived from the original on 4 July 2018.
  18. "Foreign Correspondents: The Tiny World of Anthony Grey". Time. 20 December 1968. Retrieved 22 May 2010.
  19. Shamanska, Anna (11 May 2016). "Ukrainian Hackers Leak Personal Data Of Thousands Of Journalists Who Worked In Donbas". Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. Archived from the original on 14 October 2019.
  20. Ives, Mike (9 July 2018). "Case Against Reuters Journalists in Myanmar Moves to Trial". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 24 August 2019.
  21. "Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo to appeal seven-year sentence". Al-Jazeera. 23 December 2018. Archived from the original on 27 April 2019.
  22. "Reuters journalists Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo win Journalist of the Year at Foreign Press Association Media Awards" (Press release). Reuters Press Blog. 27 November 2018. Archived from the original on 7 May 2019.
  23. "Pulitzer Prize: 2019 Winners List". The New York Times. 15 April 2019. Archived from the original on 30 May 2019.
  24. "Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo: Reuters journalists freed in Myanmar". BBC News. 7 May 2019. Archived from the original on 24 August 2019.
  25. Tyson, Ann Scott (15 September 2009). "Military's Killing of 2 Journalists in Iraq Detailed in New Book". The Washington Post. p. 7. Archived from the original on 27 August 2017.
  26. "Rolling Stone's Biggest Scoops, Exposés and Controversies". Rolling Stone. 24 June 2010. Retrieved 13 December 2020.
  27. Bernstein, Carl. "The CIA and the Media". www.carlbernstein.com. Archived from the original on 8 April 2020. Retrieved 15 November 2020.
  28. "Worldwide Propaganda Network Built by the C.I.A. (Published 1977)". The New York Times. 26 December 1977. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 13 December 2020.
  29. Moeller, Susan D. (2004). "A Moral Imagination: The Media's Response to the War on Terrorism". In Allan, Stuart; Zelizer, Barbie (eds.). Reporting War: Journalism in Wartime. Routledge. pp. 68. ISBN 978-0415339988.
  30. The Reuters Style Guide "Terrorism, terrorist - Handbook of Journalism". Reuters. Retrieved 21 May 2019..
  31. Austen, Ian (20 September 2004). "Reuters Asks a Chain to Remove Its Bylines". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 14 October 2019.
  32. Kroh, Kiley (16 July 2013). "Reuters Exposed: Publication Openly Hostile to Climate Coverage, Top Editor Doubts Climate Science". ThinkProgress. Archived from the original on 10 May 2015. Retrieved 17 June 2015.
  33. Lazare, Sarah (17 July 2013). "Climate Change 'Climate of Fear': Reporter Blows Whistle on Reuters". Common Dreams. Archived from the original on 20 February 2015. Retrieved 17 June 2015.
  34. Goldenberg, Suzanne (26 July 2013). "Reuters' climate-change coverage 'fell by nearly 50% with sceptic as editor'". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 19 October 2017. Retrieved 14 October 2019.
  35. Goller, Howard (16 September 2019). "Paul Ingrassia, one of the top business reporters of his era". Reuters. Retrieved 13 December 2020.
  36. Chris O'Shea (16 April 2013). "Reuters Sends Paul Ingrassia to London | FishbowlNY". Mediabistro.com. Retrieved 17 June 2015.
  37. Roush, Chris (16 July 2013). "Ex-Reuters journalist: Wire service not interested in climate change stories". Talking Biz News. Archived from the original on 15 October 2019. Retrieved 17 June 2015.
  38. Romm, Joe (21 July 2013). "False Balance Lives At Reuters: Climatologist Slams 'Absurd' Use of 'Unrelated Climate Skeptics Nonsense'". ThinkProgress. Archived from the original on 18 June 2019. Retrieved 17 June 2015.
  39. Lappin, Yaakov (6 August 2006). "Reuters admits altering Beirut photo". Ynetnews. Archived from the original on 22 March 2019.
  40. "Reuters toughens rules after altered photo affair Photos". Reuters. 7 January 2007. Archived from the original on 25 January 2016. Retrieved 15 August 2016.
  41. Mozgovaya, Natasha (8 June 2010). "Reuters under fire for removing weapons, blood from images of Gaza flotilla". Haaretz. Archived from the original on 15 June 2018. Retrieved 8 June 2010.
  42. "Para blindar FHC, 'Reuters' propõe em matéria: 'podemos tirar se achar melhor'" [To protect FHC, 'Reuters' proposes in matter: 'we can take it off if you think it's better'.]. Jornal do Brasil (in Portuguese). 25 March 2015. Archived from the original on 11 October 2017. Retrieved 25 March 2015.
  43. Winter, Brian (23 March 2015). "Entrevista-FHC diz que Lula tem mais responsabilidade política em caso Petrobras do que Dilma" [ENTREVISTA-FHC says Lula has more political responsibility in Petrobras case than Dilma] (in Portuguese). Reuters Brasil. Archived from the original on 6 November 2018. Retrieved 25 March 2015.
  44. "Podemos tirar, se achar melhor" ["We can take it off, if you think it's better"]. CartaCapital (in Portuguese). Editora Confiança. 24 March 2015. Archived from the original on 19 June 2019. Retrieved 24 March 2015.
  45. Rosenbaum, Martin (13 January 2020). "How the UK secretly funded a Middle East news agency". BBC. Archived from the original on 14 January 2020.
  46. Faulconbridge, Guy (13 January 2020). Bendeich, Mark (ed.). "Britain secretly funded Reuters in 1960s and 1970s - documents". Reuters. Nick Tattersall (ed.). Archived from the original on 14 January 2020.

Sources
  • Read, Donald (1992). The Power of News: The History of Reuters 1849–1989. Oxford, Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-821776-5.
  • Mooney, Brian; Simspon, Barry (2003). Breaking News: How the Wheels Came off at Reuters. Capstone. ISBN 1-84112-545-8.
  • Fenby, Jonathan (12 February 1986). The International News Services. Schocken Books. p. 275. ISBN 0-8052-3995-2.
  • Schwarzlose, Richard (1 January 1989). Nation's Newsbrokers Volume 1: The Formative Years: From Pretelegraph to 1865. Northwestern University Press. p. 370. ISBN 0-8101-0818-6.
  • Schwarzlose, Richard (1 February 1990). Nation's Newsbrokers Volume 2: The Rush to Institution: From 1865 to 1920. Northwestern University Press. p. 366. ISBN 0-8101-0819-4.
  • Schwarzlose, Richard (June 1979). The American Wire Services. Ayer Co Pub. p. 453. ISBN 0-405-11774-4.
  • Silberstein-Loeb, Jonathan (2014). The International Distribution of News: The Associated Press, Press Association, and Reuters, 1848–1947.

Further reading
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